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No jail for corporal in Hamdania killing
By: TERI FIGUEROA -- staff writer Jury still contemplating sentence for his squad leader
CAMP PENDLETON ---- A Marine corporal guilty of conspiring to kill an Iraqi was sentenced to a reduction in rank and time served this morning, meaning today he will walk out of a Camp Pendleton jail and back into Marine life.
Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, who was in on a plot to kill the man but admitted that he did not actually shoot him, hugged his crying family after his sentence was read.
"I get to go home," said the 24-year-old Magincalda, whose rank will be reduced to private. "I'm still in the Marine Corps. I didn't get discharged."
Magincalda is the second Marine sentenced to time served --- in his case it was 448 days. The squad's leader, Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins, is awaiting sentencing on murder charges. Five others pleaded guilty and received jail sentences.
Although Magincalda could have been sentenced to life in prison for his conviction for conspiracy to commit murder, larceny and housebreaking, prosecutors on Thursday asked the jury to send him to jail for 10 years.
But the jury, made up entirely of veterans of the Iraq war, rejected jail, opting to allow Magincalda to stay in the Marine Corps.
The Manteca native served in Iraq three times, including vicious firefights in Fallujah where he saw his buddies die. On Thursday, Magincalda's psychiatrist testified that Magincalda suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
Two weeks ago, a jury also rejected jail time for one of Magincalda's accused squad mates, even though that man had faced up to life in prison for his conviction for kidnapping and conspiracy.
A jury is still deciding on a sentence for Hutchins, who was convicted Thursday of murder and other charges in the same incident. Prosecutors in that case want the squad leader to go to military prison for 30 years. He is the first Marine convicted of murder by a military jury for killing an Iraqi since the start of the war.
Hutchins' jury began deliberating his fate this morning.
In a courtroom two buildings down, as he listened to his own sentence, Magincalda said his thoughts were with Hutchins.
"My mind was on other matters," Magincalda said. "I have a buddy who's going through dire straits right now."
Magincalda's attorney refused to allow his client to answer a handful of particular media questions, including what Magincalda might have done differently on April 26, 2006, the night he and his squad mates yanked the neighbor of a highly suspected Iraqi insurgent out of bed and shot him to death in the rural village of Hamdania.
According to testimony, the crew did it to send a message to those in the area that insurgency would not be tolerated.
Civilian attorney Joseph Low also refused to let Magincalda say whether he believed what the eight troops did that night saved lives, whether the message got through and whether it reduced the number of attacks on U.S. troops in the Hamdania area.
But Magincalda did say why he refused to take a plea deal, even though five of his squad mates struck deals that gave them reduced sentences in exchange for testifying against the other accused in the case.
"I was not going to save myself to maybe, possibly bury another Marine," Magincalda said, adding that he does not fault the men who took deals and that he remains friends with them.
Two months after the slaying of the man, Hashim Ibrahim Awad, the Marine Corps charged the Camp Pendleton-based squad of seven Marines and one Navy corpsman with murder and a host of other charges.
The charges in the Hamdania case came three months after a Time magazine story on the deaths of 24 civilians by a different squad of Marines in Haditha sparked an internal military inquiry and an international furor. That group of men is also stationed at Camp Pendleton. Court proceedings are pending in those cases.
The battalion commander overseeing the squad in the Hamdania case has testified that complaints from the family of the slain Awad, coupled with the Haditha inquiry, led him to investigate Awad's slaying.
Magincalda spent the last 15 months in the brig. He was supposed to get out of the Marine Corps last fall, but his active duty tour was extended by the military while he fought the criminal charges. He has another five months left in the Marine Corps.
He said he wants to re-enlist and would even go back to Iraq if asked.
"I did my time (in the brig)," Magincalda said. "If the Marine Corps is willing to keep me, I am willing to stay on."